Multifamily

Collins has established itself as an East Coast multifamily developer and operator that partners can count on. By Alan Dorich

Collins is a full-service real estate company specializing in the redevelopment and repositioning of multifamily and mixed-use properties in emerging urban locations. Based in Old Greenwich, Conn., Collins owns and operates a portfolio of multifamily and commercial office buildings in Virginia and Metro New York. Principals Arthur and Dwight Collins started the company in 1991 and established a successful platform specializing in development and acquisition of multifamily assets in strategic locations adjacent to public transit, urban waterfronts and lifestyle retail centers.

Collins’ portfolio also includes suburban office buildings, but the company has made its biggest mark in mixed-use and multi-family assets. Often, Collins has spearheaded public/private partnerships creating projects on brownfield and vacant sites to bring properties back into the stream of commerce. Collins pursues opportunities in markets that are linked to employment centers. “We build projects in towns and cities that have progressive administrations and offer incentives to encourage new private investment,” Arthur Collins says.

Acquiring and improving multifamily properties has been the specialty of the Granite State’s Purcell Properties for decades. By Eric Slack

New Hampshire’s Purcell Properties is a family owned and operated company based in the heart of the state’s Upper Valley in Lebanon. Focused on the multifamily property market, Purcell Properties is focused on acquiring and improving distressed assets and providing value to its renters and communities.

“My parents started this company as a side business in the 1960s, my brothers and I came in during the 1990s and worked to take the company to the next level,” co-owner Kevin Purcell says. “We have no investors and own everything ourselves. Our company is known for taking tired properties and investing in value-add turnarounds, renovating properties and staying sensitive to elements like style and color. We are very service-oriented, and our goal is resident satisfaction.”

New Hope works to end homelessness in Houston with its affordable housing. By Alan Dorich

For more than 20 years, New Hope Housing has strived to provide a permanent solution to the plight of homelessness in the city of Houston. As the full-service development company has built single room occupancy (SRO) apartment housing for low income individuals, it has made sure that each affordable living unit features a high degree of quality.

“This is a lovely answer for a lot of people,” President and CEO Joy Horak-Brown declares. “I have always felt very strongly that we won’t build a unit of housing that I wouldn’t live in myself. That has become a mantra for us.”

The People of Christ Church Cathedral-Episcopal founded the company in 1993, after seeing homeless citizens near the Church. “It wasn’t necessary for them to commission a complicated study,” Horak-Brown says, noting that Houston had zero SRO units at that time.

The breadth of Oakbrook Corporation’s services has it well positioned to seize every opportunity in multifamily and commercial real estate as these segments continue to prosper. By Janice Hoppe

Despite the inevitable ups and downs of the real estate market, Oakbrook Corporation has continued to prosper over the past 29 years because of the services it offers in both the multifamily and commercial segments. “We manage 12 million square feet of space, which is quite substantial for a Wisconsin homegrown company,” President Michael L. Morey says. “It’s the breadth of the services we offer and the depth of experience that makes us different from virtually every firm.”

The Madison, Wis.-based company was founded in 1987 with a portfolio of 1,500 apartment units and 400,000 square feet of commercial property it managed. Today, Oakbrook manages more than 6,800 apartments in Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois, and 46 commercial properties in the Madison area, totaling nearly 2 million square feet.

Creating a sense of community is not an easy task for any developer or builder. But Perennial Properties has had great success finding the freshest and most walkable areas in the core of Atlanta in which to build multifamily, luxury apartment communities.

What makes Perennial Properties truly unique is that, whatever the company chooses to develop, it does so with the intent to hold the property forever. “Everything we do, we go in with the assumption that we will hold it for its functional life,” Vice President Jay McGinnity says. “It makes you much more conscious of what it’s going to take to maintain and operate this building for future cycles.”